6PM’s Climate-HIV now live at Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital

6PM’s Climate-HIV is now live at The HIV Service at Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital, part of the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust.

This healthcare ICT solution is being used for clinical management support of the trust’s HIV care.

Climate-HIV is an ‘HIV clinic in a box’. Having all the patient’s data in an Electronic Patient Record (EPR) provides the clinical team with fast access to information, helps educate patients, halves the administration needed to write GP letters and referrals, and records all patient details in one place. In addition, all audit and conformance measures are incorporated automatically to ensure improvement of the service throughout the care pathway. This includes the HARS data-set, which is mandatory for Public Health England.

A particular aspect of the Climate-HIV installation at Heartlands Hospital is the degree of integration with existing hospital systems. Pathology results, clinic appointments and patient demographic information are all synchronised with the central hospital systems, driving down the amount of data entry required from medical workers, clearing more time for them to provide patient care.

From a pharmaceutical perspective, Climate-HIV enables the management of costly medications.

The workload of the clinician in generating prescriptions, the pharmacists’ screening and processing of these items, and the collection by patients can now be managed via the system. This enables the clinic to monitor usage of drugs, budget for current and future requirements, and ensures that the clinic is able to operate in a highly-efficient and cost-effective way.

Steve Wightman, deputy chief executive at 6PM, said: “The implementation of Climate-HIV at Heartlands Hospital will not only present the clinicians with all the information they need to know about their patients, but will also allow the trust to forecast what their spend on HIV medicine will be during the year. Heartlands Hospital is now one of many trusts in the UK benefitting from this solution.”

Dr Steve Taylor, lead consultant at Birmingham Heartlands HIV Service, added: “So far I am very impressed with Climate-HIV. Its potential for improving patient care and facilitating audit and research is clear. Furthermore, report generation for collecting epidemiological information is a breath of fresh air and will save our staff hundreds of hours.”